


He's Been Ghosting

by WizenedBeanie



Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Ghost Wilbur Soot, Light Angst, Niki | Nihachu-centric, Wilbur Soot - Freeform, just sad emotions, not much comfort here boys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-15
Updated: 2021-01-15
Packaged: 2021-03-13 08:54:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28775649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WizenedBeanie/pseuds/WizenedBeanie
Summary: Niki hasn't met Ghostbur yet. Now... maybe isn't the best time to meet Ghostbur
Relationships: Niki | Nihachu & Wilbur Soot
Comments: 2
Kudos: 50





	He's Been Ghosting

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write Something and I wanted Niki to finally meet Ghostbur and I Guess I also didn't want a happy ending so uhhhhh enjoy!!

The rain from that day had caused a bit of leakage, and the cracks formed from the TNT blasts miles away didn’t help the situation one bit. 

Surrounded by empty cavern walls, dusty flickering lanterns, and the sound of water echoing off the carved out floor deep in the unfinished walls of her city, Niki curled up on one of her many double chests of supplies, and read. 

Most things were destroyed in the explosions, the vast majority of everyone’s saved supplies and all that, but a few books tucked deep in a sewer were still intact. Niki had gone searching through the rubble once everyone had left, just internally confirming… the state of things. L’manburg was finally gone, her past was behind her, Will was… dead and killed by Phil, and she had been standing alone in the final crater. She’d hoped it would help somehow (it didn’t), so she gathered all her food leftover and spent most of the night looking at all the hidden places kept under the floors of the dead city. She was going to cause problems for those who ignored her at some point, but now she just wanted to… absorb it all for a little longer. In the process, she’d found a couple books with burned edges, an old flag or two, a clump of blue wool, and a brown coat. 

She’d burned the flags and the coat. 

The books she’d found were nothing incredibly special, there was one labelled Memories but it had been too burnt to even come close to making out (she’d set that one aside where she was hoping she wouldn’t find it again), and the rest were just L’manburg history books. They didn’t contain good memories anymore… but they’d be useful for the library. 

Slowly but surely, she picked her way through every frayed and battered book, marking off pages that contained interesting info or even better, little to no wear and tear. The cold from the stone surrounding her on all sides for miles seeped into her bones, only warmed in the external sense by the gently swaying lanterns on either side of her, as she quietly read. Sulfur and dust, from either the explosions or the burnt books, softly floated past her and onto the damp cave floor. A gentle, oddly warm breeze went through the cavern, and she felt the muscles in her face that she hadn’t realized were tense, relax a bit. Maybe this wasn’t so bad.

“Hello, Niki!”

She fell off the chest. 

“Oh goodness oh my oh dear I’m so sorry Niki this happens sometimes. Please Niki calm yourself!” Niki looked up from the cold stone floor into the equally cold eyes of her visitor, who was now holding out a small handful of blue… clay was it? She felt rather than processed her breathing pick up and heart race, as the long-dead face of her old friend grinned at her from under a ghostly mop of grey hair. “Have some blue!” 

Niki felt the air cool around her hand as Wilbur pressed the clump of blue dye into it, helping to lift her off of the ground and gesturing for her to return to her seat on the chest. She followed without protest, examining his flickering face and… gaping sword wound in his chest with wide eyes. Wilbur grinned and promptly sat cross-legged on a chest in front of her. 

For a good minute or two, Niki just stared, and Wilbur stared back. He looked… different from when she’d last seen him, angry and vengeful and at the end of a fraying rope, but the face was the same, the grin was… more carefree than she remembered but still the same, the only major difference was that he was right there in front of her. She remained frozen.

“Well Niki, this is a little awkward. I'm not going to lie,” he rasped, voice echoing around the walls and through her head. Niki felt the edges of her mouth rise and heard herself let out a hollow chuckle, before turning away from the dead man in front of her to look at the cavern in front of them.

“Yeah Will. Sure is,” she breathed out. From beside her, she felt the cold movement of air as the specter floated behind her, and heard the quiet creaking sound of someone sitting beside her on the chest. The dead man cleared his throat with a rasping cough.

“It has been so long since I’ve visited Niki! How are you?” he asked, leaning slightly into Niki’s field of vision. Niki didn’t respond, turning her head to check if this… vision was still there before turning back to the leaky unfinished library. “I’m very sorry I didn’t really have the time to visit,” Niki smiled, “Dream sent me into the cold winter and I think I almost melted a little bit and I had to stop Tommy from being sad on holiday, you know how it is.” Niki looked back at his face, still there, and slowly nodded.

“Yeah Will, yeah I get it.” His face was… so pale. Still grinning, he floated off the chest and directly in front of her, so she turned her face down to the ground to avoid his grin.

“Oh please Niki, please, call me Ghostbur! I’m dead!” he exclaimed. Niki winced, closing her eyes tightly. She could’ve ran like she did last time, blown up this whole area to get away from the memories, but she was far, far too tired… the vision would go away eventually. Maybe if she just, didn’t acknowledge it? She didn’t respond and waited. 

“Niki are you quite alright? Maybe if you throw away the blue you’ll feel better! That’s how it works y’know you throw it away and then-” he rambled on and Niki turned her head back up to look. 

Christ, how long did hallucinations last anyway?

He was still rambling, kind of floating around in that space absentmindedly as he talked about the mechanics of “blue”. Quietly, she examined the… blue dye (?) in her hands and without a word, bent down to set the clump on the ground, avoiding the ghost’s gaze as she did so. Will’s head immediately shot up.

“Oh good! You threw it away! Nikinikiniki. Niki. Do you feel better now?” he rasped quizzically. Gosh, he sounded so full of energy. Niki allowed a smile to spread across her face and hesitantly, nodded. Will spun around in the air and clapped, “Excellent! See! Blue is very calming! Now Niki you didn’t actually answer the question of how are you? It’s been far far too long and I’ve noncanonically died like twelve times since we spoke, and once canonically!” 

Niki’s laugh caught her off guard, but once she’d started she really couldn’t stop. The laughter bubbled out through her mouth in aborted coughs and wheezes, flowing out past her eyelashes in tears she hadn’t quite let herself express. It really was just… all gone. How ridiculous was that? Even the fucking specter of the dead developed a sense of humor about all they’d lost. Her chest heaved and her lungs shook from the effort of all the laughter until it was mostly just gasps of air. She couldn’t stop laughing. Distantly, she felt the sensation of cold air wrapping around her shoulders, and slowly but surely, her breathing slowed, until all that was left were the tracks of tears making their way down their face. 

“ … I’m sorry Niki.”

She took a series of shaky breaths and curled further into herself, allowing herself just for a second to pretend the ghost hugging her was alive and real.

“ … I should’ve visited before, and and… “

The voice echoed against the cave walls along with the drops of water. You could barely hear the rain pounding from inside the cavern.

“I don’t know what I did. Or… well I do but it feels far away and stuff. Alivebur was a bad person.”

She reached up and rubbed at her eyes, taking the book that she’d set down beside her and hugging it close.

“I… I want to make things better. I promise I’ll visit you again. Maybe I’ll even be alive next time!”

The cold sensation around her shoulders was gone.

Niki’s head shot up and she looked around the room. Will was gone. Maybe… maybe he was never even there to begin with… 

The echo of her shoes against the floor sounded out as she walked towards where she hid the book called Memories, and back towards the small pile of books she’d already saved.

The fireplace tucked in a corner of the unfinished library crackled at first with the wood she’d supplied it with, and then with the pages of an already mostly destroyed tome. 

She looked back at the cavern she’d carved out, rough edges and ore on all sides, warped through blurry eyes. She didn’t look down at the floor. If she had, she would’ve seen the blue dye that had been smeared on the floor, and she didn’t want to look at that. 

This place was the perfect place for her to mope, forever empty with no one else. Devoid of memories except for her own, hidden away for no one to find refuge in its cold dead walls. It wasn’t a secret city anymore, it was a place to keep her thoughts. There were some thoughts though, that didn’t really need keeping. No one would’ve wanted to read them anyway.

Rubbing at the last of the tears in her eyes, she picked up a pickaxe from a nearby chest and set back to work.

**Author's Note:**

> Big sad emotion.


End file.
